Tough Brasher shrugged off cancer

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — He's the last of the old football tough guys — men hewn in the scalding Southern sun who pulled ball caps over their eyes, said nothing and spit tobacco like the Bear.

On the day in 2001, when they told Philadelphia Eagles defensive-line coach Tommy Brasher he had cancer, he simply nodded. He wasn't scared. He had figured it was cancer that he had in the side of his neck just below his right ear. It had been growing for weeks, ever since he felt a small bump while taking a shower at training camp. As the months went by, the bump got bigger and bigger until he went to see a doctor and the doctor uttered the sentence that brings everybody to their knees.

"It's malignant," he said.

Brasher shrugged.

The next day the doctors cut out the cancer. It was an aggressive form that had already invaded his salivary gland. The doctors had no choice but to remove the gland in an operation that took seven hours. Three days later, he was in the coaches' booth for the Eagles' game in New York.

"There was no reason not to go back to work," the 64-year-old Brasher said this week. "Laying around in bed wouldn't help. As soon as I could get out of bed, I went back to work."

They put him in the coaches' booth and told him to relax. But this wasn't good enough. He looked down and could see the players weren't listening to the assistant, Dave Taub, who had taken his place on the field.

Not that there was anything wrong with Taub. It's just that Taub wasn't Brasher. He didn't scowl or pull the ball cap over his eyes. He didn't look like an old football tough guy, and the players treated him like he wasn't. When halftime came, Brasher couldn't stand it anymore. He climbed into the elevator, went down to the basement and strutted out onto the field.

"He said he needed to be on the sideline," said Eagles defensive tackle Hollis Thomas.

He has been there ever since.

For 22 years, Brasher has made defensive lines in the NFL the way they did back in his hometown, El Dorado, Ark. — tough and feisty and fast. In the lost Seahawks decade of the 1990s, he was the lone bright light standing on the side of the practice fields, the cap tugged over his eyes, turning men like Cortez Kennedy, Sam Adams and Michael Sinclair into Pro Bowl players. By the time he left the Seahawks in 1999, they had the best line in football.

He's a big part of why the Eagles are in the Super Bowl. Philadelphia might not have as talented a front line as the Seahawks did, but it is aggressive and good. If there is any reason to believe the Eagles will win this Super Bowl, it's because of their defense. And the Eagles' defense starts with the line. And that line is something like its coach.

"Tough as nails," Thomas said.

There probably wasn't an Eagle around who didn't expect Brasher back that first day. Even after hearing how serious the surgery had been, they smiled. They knew he would be back. They laugh about his crankiness, his stoic expression. But deep down they think he's soft, that he loves his players in his own silent way. They figured he would soon miss them.

"Most people would have taken the whole season off," defensive tackle Corey Simon said. "No one would have blamed him, either. But he loves football."

They don't make coaches like Tommy Brasher anymore. The new guys are slick, more polished, comfortable with cameras in their face. Brasher never liked attention. He always liked the fringes of the practice fields, hollering at his linemen in his Arkansas twang. Occasionally he would swear. Always they would work.

He never tried newfangled systems, never rushed off to coaching clinics with his arms full of notebooks, ready to learn the next big thing. This wasn't his style. He had his way, and he never saw the need to change.

"I always thought it was best if you figured it out for yourself," he said.

It's hard to argue with the results.

On the day they cut the cancer from Brasher's neck, they found the disease had threatened his lymph nodes. So just days after returning for that game in New York, he had another surgery — this time to remove 67 lymph nodes. The result is a 6-inch long, vertical scar behind his ear.

Never did he complain. Never, he said, did he fear for his life. He didn't have time. Football called, and he needed to be there.

The doctors put him on an aggressive recovery plan. Every weekday at 7 a.m. he had to go for a radiation treatment. He did this for six weeks until he had undergone 30 treatments. And, at the end of those six weeks, Brasher was exhausted.

"It knocks you back," he said. "Because they went after my taste buds, it took my taste away. Little by little, it drains you."

But he never stopped coaching. The playoffs were coming, and the Eagles were on the first of four runs to the NFC Championship Game. Brasher refused to take time off. And when the offseason came, he worked right through that as well.

Last year he was told the cancer was gone. He greeted this news just as he had the diagnosis.

He shrugged.

He had players to coach.

And the last of the old football tough guys lives on.

Les Carpenter: 206-464-2280 or lcarpenter@seattletimes.com.